Florida

Florida beachfront paradise shattered by Hurricane Ian

Published

2 years ago

October 5, 2022

Florida beachfront paradise shattered by Hurricane Ian

FORT MYERS BEACH, Fla., Oct 5 (Reuters) – Almost per week after Hurricane Ian hammered southwest Florida, as soon as tony Fort Myers Seashore is a virtually abandoned catastrophe zone the place destroyed seashore homes now mar the postcard views that made this stretch of the Gulf Coast well-known.

The city on Estero Island going through the Gulf of Mexico was one of many communities hit hardest by the Class 4 hurricane, which killed greater than 100 individuals within the state when it struck final week.

Fort Myers Seashore, a barrier island that stands between the Gulf and the town of Fort Myers, has a inhabitants of 5,600, residing in bungalows and posh multistory seashore homes. Many retirees residing right here have second houses elsewhere in the US.

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The island’s smooth, white sands and teal waves now make for a stark backdrop to rows of pastel storefronts which can be lacking partitions and home windows, a landmark pier stripped to its piles, crushed seashore homes, and foundations swept fully clear of the homes that after rested on them.

At one tackle, a set of concrete steps results in nowhere. Furnishings, plumbing fixtures and drywall are scattered all over the place.

Rescue groups directed by the U.S. Federal Emergency Administration Company (FEMA) are conducting a second spherical of door-to-door checks for survivors, geared up with canines and cameras on extending poles.

“It’s going to be an extended restoration,” mentioned Ignatius Carroll, a consultant of Florida Process Pressure 2, a search-and-rescue unit that’s a part of FEMA’s efforts.

“See that particles from the home?” Carroll asks throughout a tour of Fort Meyers Seashore, pointing to a house with its entrance yard piled excessive like a junkyard. “That got here from one other home over right here.”

The primary 48 hours after a catastrophe hits are important to discovering survivors, though many individuals in hurricane-prone areas inventory 72 hours’ price of meals and water, Carroll mentioned. Even so, it is doable to seek out individuals days later than that, relying on their provisions, he mentioned.

Steve Duello, 67, a retired grocery retailer govt from St. Louis, mentioned he was devastated on Tuesday to see the injury to his Fort Myers Seashore house for the primary time because the hurricane hit.

His ruined home full of 8 toes of water in the course of the storm, and Duello mentioned he is not sure whether or not he’ll rebuild, regardless that he has been coming to the seashore since he was 14.

“It is method too early. Proper now our guts have been torn out. I don’t wish to ever undergo that once more.”

Fort Myers Seashore “seems to be like Hiroshima or Nagasaki,” he mentioned, referring to Japanese cities the place U.S. forces dropped atomic bombs throughout World Battle Two.

One other island resident, who declined to present his identify, stayed via the storm, and has no plans to depart.

“I really like this place. I do not wish to stay wherever else however right here,” mentioned the aged, deeply tanned man, carrying shorts and no shirt.

“My daughter desires to select me up and return to New York. I do not wish to go.”

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Reporting by Rod Nickel in Fort Myers Seashore; modifying by Jonathan Oatis

Our Requirements: The Thomson Reuters Belief Ideas.

Rod Nickel

Thomson Reuters

Covers vitality, agriculture and politics in Western Canada with the vitality transition a key space of focus. Has finished brief reporting stints in Afghanistan, Pakistan, France and Brazil and coated Hurricane Michael in Florida, Tropical Storm Nate in New Orleans and the 2016 Alberta wildfires and the marketing campaign trails of political leaders throughout two Canadian election campaigns.

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Florida

3 most underrated signees in Florida State football's 2025 class

Published

6 hours ago

December 22, 2024

Press Room

3 most underrated signees in Florida State football's 2025 class

Florida State football had an embarrassing 2024 campaign where it finished with a 2-10 record. This is not the expectation of what the Seminoles are all about.

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Head football coach Mike Norvell understood the urgency as he could not allow the program to snowball into a laughing stock after a productive 13-1 season in 2023. Norvell was heading into a pivotal sixth season with his job on the line.

As a result, he went out and hired a ton of new coaches on his staff, including Gus Malzahn, Tim Harris Jr., Herb Hand, Tony White, Terrance Knighton, and Evan Cooper. This was uncharted territory for Norvell since he had never had to fire multiple coaches like that.

Nonetheless, we were wondering how the Seminoles’ 2025 recruiting class would play out with new coaches as well as the struggling year in 2024.

The recruiting class did well, and it finished with the 20th-best in the 247Sports Composite rankings (prospects can still sign in February). In this article, I want to highlight three of the most underrated signees from Florida State’s 2025 recruiting class.

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Florida

U.S. Amateur runner-up Noah Kent is transferring to Florida

Published

14 hours ago

December 22, 2024

Press Room

U.S. Amateur runner-up Noah Kent is transferring to Florida

Noah Kent is heading home.

The 2024 U.S. Amateur runner-up is transferring to Florida, he announced Saturday. The sophomore at Iowa, whose hometown is Naples, Florida, entered the transfer portal earlier this month, and he made his decision to join coach J.C. Deacon and the 2023 national champions come next fall.

Because of NCAA rules, Kent won’t be eligible to compete for Florida until the 2025-26 season, but he can finish his sophomore year with the Hawkeyes. This fall, he placed in the top 13 all four tournaments, his best finish being a T-5 at the Fighting Irish Classic.

And, of course, he has a tee time at Augusta National Golf Club in the spring.

Kent will essentially be the fourth member of Florida’s 2025 signing class, which ranked second in the country on signing day. He’ll join a talented roster that includes Parker Bell, Mathew Kress and Jack Turner, though with new NCAA roster limits coming, there’s bound to be some unprecedented roster turnover in college golf before the start of the 2025-26 season.

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Florida

State Your Case: Do Panthers or Lightning own state of Florida? | NHL.com

Published

22 hours ago

December 22, 2024

Press Room

State Your Case: Do Panthers or Lightning own state of Florida? | NHL.com

There are two NHL teams in Florida: the Florida Panthers and the Tampa Bay Lightning.

They are separated by about 250 miles and have been fierce rivals since the Panthers joined the NHL for the 1993-94 season. The Lightning joined the League a season earlier.

Florida (21-11-2) and Tampa Bay (18-10-2) meet for the first time this season at Amalie Arena in Tampa on Sunday (5 p.m. ET; FDSNSUN, CRIPPS, SN, TVAS).

The teams have played each other 157 times in the regular season; the Panthers have gone 77-51-19, and the Lightning are 70-64-13. There have been 10 ties.

For years, the rivalry was a parochial affair, deeply important to hockey fans in the state but under the radar nationally. Lately, though, Florida supremacy has often meant NHL supremacy.

The Panthers are the reigning Stanley Cup champions and defeated the Lightning in five games in the best-of-7 Eastern Conference First Round last season to start that title march. They reached the Stanley Cup Final two seasons ago, going on a miracle run before losing to the Vegas Golden Knights. The season before that, they won the Presidents’ Trophy with an NHL-best 122 points but lost to the Lightning in a second-round sweep, marking the second straight time that their noisy neighbors ended their season.

The Lightning won back-to-back Stanley Cup championships in 2020 and 2021 before reaching a third straight Final in 2022, losing to the Colorado Avalanche. Tampa Bay won the Presidents’ Trophy in 2018-19.

This season, each team is on course for another appearance in the Stanley Cup Playoffs and has a point percentage of better than .600.

So which team has the merits to claim bragging rights in this all-Florida showdown as the rivals face off for the first time this season? That’s the question debated by NHL.com senior writers Amalie Benjamin and Dan Rosen in the latest installment of State Your Case.

Benjamin: Let’s lay out what the Lightning have accomplished in their 32-season history: They’ve won the Stanley Cup three times, becoming the first team from Florida to win it when they took the championship in 2004. But that doesn’t come close to what they’ve accomplished during the past 11 seasons, starting in 2013-14, when they became a powerhouse. They’ve been to the Stanley Cup Playoffs 10 times in those 11 seasons, making the Stanley Cup Final in a whopping four of them. Let me repeat that: Four trips to the Cup Final in the past 11 seasons, winning twice, in 2020 and 2021. And if that’s not enough, they made two more trips to the Eastern Conference Final, in 2016 and 2018. Forget Florida’s team. They’re the team of the past decade in the entire NHL.

Rosen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what have you done for me lately? Florida’s team fluctuates. It was the Lightning. It is the Panthers. They’ve got the Stanley Cup. They went to the Stanley Cup Final two years in a row. Sure, a few years ago, this wasn’t even a debate. Florida’s team, the Panthers? Please. No shot. Even the top executives with the Panthers would tell you that. But things change. With success come the riches. Just think about the past three seasons for the Panthers: Presidents’ Trophy winners in 2021-22, Stanley Cup Final in 2022-23, Stanley Cup champions in 2023-24. The Lightning lost in the 2022 Cup Final, lost in the first round in six games the next season and lost in the first round in five games to the Panthers last season. Florida’s team is Florida.

Benjamin: OK, sure, you have a point. Florida has done pretty darn well lately. But let’s see how history will judge the state of Florida and its hockey teams. Hall of Famers? The Lightning have got ’em. Though Steven Stamkos has moved on to the Nashville Predators, the Hall of Fame is going to come calling, and the forward will go in as a member of the Lightning. Add in coach Jon Cooper, forward Nikita Kucherov, defenseman Victor Hedman and goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy, and you’re talking at least five future Hall of Famers on a single team. That’s not just good, that’s historically good. It’s a group whose names are synonymous with winning, with the Stanley Cup, with the state of Florida. That’s powerful. That says the Lightning win this debate, no question.

Rosen: I have a question. Is Aleksander Barkov not paving his way to the Hall of Fame? Is Sergei Bobrovsky, with a Stanley Cup ring, 400-plus wins and two Vezina Trophy wins as the NHL’s best goalie, not a lock for the Hall of Fame? Is Paul Maurice, who could finish his career with at least the second-most coaching wins of all time, along with his Stanley Cup ring, not also a lock for the Hall of Fame? In the way-too-early department, could Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Reinhart be future Hall of Famers? I lied. That’s four questions. But you get the point. You brought up the Hall of Fame and I countered. That’s why the Lightning do not win this debate without question. Could they win it? Yes, certainly, if we were having this debate in 2023. It’s almost 2025. It’s a different world. It’s the Panthers’ world, at least in Florida. The Lightning are just living in it. At least the sun is still shining on them too.

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